


write it in stone that you were my home

by maximoffs



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, also eventual smut but who can say for sure, eventual plot I think, like... sad pining kind of, mainly banter, talking about feelings, two repressed 40 year old men just roast the shit out of each other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-01-05 06:20:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21203318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maximoffs/pseuds/maximoffs
Summary: after the events of IT chapter 2, eddie kaspbrak wakes up in an underground sewer angry as hell.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> SHOUT OUT TO BETH

After the sewers, and the destruction of Neibolt house. After the quarry, and the long walk back through town. The Losers returned to Derry Town House one last time, and three blackbirds gathered to perch upon the telephone wire across the street.

The weariness they felt—each one of them—was unspeakable; it seemed to take root and settle into their bones. It was a palpable thing, this feeling, as though the collective weight of all the children’s bodies piling up had landed on their shoulders. There was a relief too, of course, and it shone brightly through the cracks of their grief; but it could not, and it would not, break through until a long rest.

Mike Hanlon saw the others off, and then returned to the library, where he took off his shoes and slept dreamless and fit, comforted by the sigh of his books, for what was probably the first time in twenty-seven years. Bill Denbrough found the energy to make a single phone call—a rushed jumble of “I’m coming home” and “everything is fine now” and “I love you so, so much” before collapsing to sleep. Ben Hanscom and Beverly Marsh lingered briefly outside of her door, their fingers entwined, the security of tomorrow and the next day and the day after that stuck firmly in their teeth.

Only Richie did not go to his room. He found himself, instead, in Eddie’s doorway, tentative at first, where he thought his heart might crumble from the sight of all the things Eddie would never wear, or touch, or inhabit ever again.

He scrubbed the bathroom first. It only seemed fair, somehow, since he had been the one on lookout while the others cleaned at Bev’s all of those years ago. He remembered that, and he wondered if it would fade again once he stepped foot out of Derry. He wondered whether a human brain had the capacity to go back and forth so many times before the lines between reality, dream, fiction, and memory began to blur. He wondered whether a human being had the capacity to hold and carry so much grief. It did not seem fair to Eddie that he should forget. It did not seem fair to him that he should have to remember, when the memory itself was now only a human-shaped absence. An Eddie-sized blood clot in the crux of him.

There were cleaning products under the sink—rubber gloves and a scrub brush. One too many bottles of bleach, Mr. Clean, multi-surface cleaner. Disinfecting wipes. Richie knew immediately that none of these items had been supplied by the hotel, and he had to press his face into the crook of his elbow to keep from crying. He cleaned methodically; he tried to inhale enough bleach to slow his brain down momentarily. It was Eddie’s blood, now, on his hands. Eddie’s blood that would never come out.

He finished scrubbing the tiles and the wall. He straightened up the curtain rack where it had fallen to the floor. Then he stripped and sat in the shower for a very long time, and tried not to think of anything at all.

Somewhere, miles underground, something gasped for air. Outside, one of the blackbirds cawed once, then flew away.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Eddie, you died.”
> 
> “That’s really fucking rude you know.”
> 
> “No, Eds, you’re—I mean, we watched you die, we were there, Bill and Mike and everyone.” 
> 
> “Do I look dead to you, asshole?”
> 
> Richie finally met his eyes. When he spoke, he sounded small, and far away. “It’s just a dream.”

Richie did not know how long he’d been asleep, but he woke up sharply—with a raging hangover. He woke up frowning, because he did not remember drinking the night before. It took another moment to put the pieces together—(there had been no drinking, there had been _ blood _ and _ almost getting murdered _ and that _ fucking clown _, there had been Eddie and then there had been no Eddie)—and he felt his body threatening to empty itself of whatever the last thing he had eaten was. He couldn’t remember. He reached for the small, metal trashcan by the bedside table and paused with his arm stretched toward it. The hangover was in reality someone pounding on the door. Someone was pounding on the door, and also the inside of his head, and Richie Tozier was no murderer but he had killed one mullet-wearing psychopath recently (were all wearers of mullets psychopaths? yep—probably), and he might have to kill again.

“I didn’t ask for room service!” he hollered at the door, putting his glasses on. “I didn’t ask for anything! Let me sleep!” But he was getting up anyway. 

The pounding on the door stopped. Richie stood, between it and the bed, waiting. There was a very long and uncomfortable moment of silence. 

Then: “What the _ fuck _?” The voice was familiar, but like—not. It was not, because it couldn't be. “What the fuck are you doing in my room? What the fuck, Rich? Let me in or I swear to god, I swear to god I’ll—” 

What Richie was having was an out of body experience. Somehow, some other worldly force propelled him forward, slow and zombie-like, to the door, and forced his hands to work, forced them to open the door to the angriest looking Eddie Kaspbrak he had ever seen.

“W… what,” Richie stammered. He opened his mouth to say something else but was promptly shoved in the chest, _ hard _. He stumbled back into the room, that zombie feeling getting thicker around his head. Floating (floating?) like haze.

“_What _ ? What do you mean _ what _ ?” Eddie walked into the room like a bulldozer; he gave Richie another shove. “What do you _ mean_, _ what _ ?” His voice was, miraculously, at an even higher pitch than usual. He had something—mud or dirt—smeared under an eye and caked into his hair. “You _ left me _ in a _ sewer _ and then a _ fucking house collapsed on me _ , Richie, and then you _ came up here _ and decided, what—oh—I’ll just sleep in his bed! I’ll just take a nice long rest here in Eddie’s bed and hope he makes it out okay! We couldn’t just _ wait a minute _ , we couldn’t just _ hang around _ to make sure, no—what does it matter? He’ll be fine, Eddie will be just fine _ underground with the body of a dead clown spider to keep him company _ !” Eddie gave him a last push and Richie felt the back of his knees hit the bed. He sat down with a _ thump _.

“This is—” Richie swallowed, his thoughts chasing one another like dumb, feral dogs in his head. “This is not how I imagined it.”

Eddie squinted at him. “What?” 

_ The bed_, he wanted to explain. The dogs were barking now so it was a little difficult to think. _ You shoving me onto the bed. _ And suddenly, struck by how ridiculous, how absurd this particular dream was (but it feels so real!), how simultaneously exhausted, terrified, and endeared he felt, Richie began to laugh.

“Are you serious? Are you fucking serious right now?”

“This is just like Dallas,” he said between bouts of laughter. “God, I—this is _ really _ probably the worst dream I’ve ever had. Or—” He stopped, suddenly, feeling the blood turn to ice in his veins. It was taking a nosedive into a raging, frigid sea; it was the moment the Paul Bunyan statue disappeared from its base. His breath shook in between his teeth. It couldn’t be—they had watched Pennywise die. They had seen it; they had manifested it (you saw Eddie die, too!). Richie found himself, for the second time in under 5 minutes—an unprecedented feat—at a loss for words. The oxygen wasn’t getting into his lungs fast enough, so much so that Eddie, (who had some experience with bad lungs), even in his blinding rage, dropped down to his knees in front of Richie with a concerned look on his face. 

Richie shook his head, on the brink again of both laughter and tears. He took off his glasses to wipe his face and put them back on. “This is not how I imagined that either.” 

“Rich…” Eddie said. There was still something harsh and unforgiving in his eyes, but it could wait until after one of his oldest friends finished having a total mental breakdown. “Buddy, you’re starting to worry me. Did you hit your head? You sound like you hit your head.”

“Eddie, you died.”

“That’s really fucking rude you know.”

“No, Eds, you’re—I mean, we watched you die, we were there, Bill and Mike and everyone.” 

“Do I look dead to you, asshole?”

Richie finally met his eyes. When he spoke, he sounded small, and far away. “It’s just a dream.”

Eddie flicked his nose. 

“Hey—”

Eddie smacked his arm.

“_ Ow _—what are you—” 

With terrifying, catlike speed, Eddie stood up and shoved Richie again, back into the bed. He scrambled on top of him, around him, spurred on probably by pure wrath, and put Richie into a headlock before he could throw him off. Richie wriggled in his grasp, only half registering what was even going on, kicking his feet to no avail. Before he could launch himself (and Eddie with him too, sure) off of the bed, Eddie stuck his index finger in his mouth and then shoved it into Richie’s ear.

“_FUCK _!” Richie shouted, squirming, finally, out of Eddie’s grip. He rolled up onto his knees, mirroring Eddie’s stance, the two of them caught in a deadlock. Richie pressed his palm to his ear. “How old are you??” 

“How—you—” Eddie sputtered. “_ YOU LEFT ME IN A FUCKING SEWER _.”

“Yeah? And you’re not real.”

Another moment of silent, glaring stalemate passed between them; then, with another cry Eddie launched himself onto Richie. One fist flew up toward Richie’s face, missing him but knocking off his glasses. The other yanked at Richie’s hair while he planted his knee into Richie’s thigh, pinning him into the bed. Richie in turn lodged one palm into Eddie’s chin, pushing him away, and another against his knee, trying to shove him off.

“What’s—wrong—with—you,” he asked between gritted teeth, between struggling to get the upper hand again. _ You _ never _ hand the upper hand though, Rich _ , he reminded himself. _ Not where Eddie was concerned. _

They struggled for minutes before giving up. This, at least, felt familiar. The struggling and the giving in. Another stalemate—this time tangled up in one another.

“This is _ not _,” Richie began to say, to repeat himself, but he sighed and let it go. “You smell terrible,” he opted for instead.

“Yeah, idiot, because I was left in—”

“Left in a sewer, yeah, I heard you.” He paused. Eddie could almost see the gears in his head working. “Wait.” Eddie sighed, letting go of Richie’s hair, and slowly sat back up. Richie sat up too. “Wait.”

“I,” Richie began slowly, then stopped, nodded like he had just made up his mind. “Yeah—I’m gonna puke, move.” He reached for the trashcan again, and hurled into it. Eddie looked away, wrinkling his nose.

“You know, you should probably get that checked out? I’m just saying, no adult man has ever thrown up so much in the span of two days.” He processed the look Richie was giving him and shrugged. “I’m just saying, Rich.”

“Eddie,” he said, after he was sure there was nothing left in him to throw up. “How is this happening?”

Eddie shrugged, pulling his knees up to his chest. It made Richie see him even clearer, the way he was when they were kids. “I woke up and you were all gone.”

“That’s impossible, I mean, your heart stopped beating. You weren’t breathing. You were leaking blood from like five different fucking places. And now, what—you just walked? You walked all the way here?” 

Eddie shrugged off the jacket he was wearing—_ my jacket _ , Richie realized dumbly—followed by his shirt. Richie could almost _ feel _ the world collapsing in on itself, inverting somehow, orbiting backwards.

“Look,” Eddie said.

“Yeah… I’m looking.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “No scars. Do you see that? I woke up and it was like… my body patched itself up or something. Just on its own. Do you have any idea how insane that is? To feel it happening to you? And all this time I was so afraid of death and disease and dying and—”

“And now you’re turning your back on your inhaler for good?”

Eddie looked sick. “God, no. Are you fucking crazy? I need to call Keene for a new prescription.”

“You don’t need to call Keene.” 

“Shut up. What are you doing in my room, anyway?” 

“I—” Richie began and stopped. He looked so uncharacteristically helpless that Eddie’s concern begins to overtake the anger. “Your heart stopped beating. I mean you were cold; you were dead. You were—I wouldn’t have—we wouldn’t have left you if we knew.” 

“You know that wasn’t an answer to what I asked, right?”

Eddie let out a sigh of frustration when Richie doesn’t answer. “Whatever, Richie. I’m taking a shower. And then I’m going to sort out my entire life. Clean up your vomit at least.”

He got off the bed, stormed into the bathroom. Richie missed the pressure on his leg. There was a moment of complete silence, then Eddie ducked his head out from the door. “The blood’s gone.” 

“Yeah, I know.” 

“Oh.”

“Oh,” Richie repeated to himself, softly, after Eddie had closed the door. He listened to the shower run and missed him, crazily, irrationally. The feeling was somehow worse than the grief; a fear of knowing you can’t hold onto water. If he didn’t come back. If he never left the bathroom. If he turned to steam in there, where Richie couldn’t see him. If it was a dream—although the ringing in his head and the impressions Eddie’s fingertips left on his skin told him otherwise. If it was one last trick—a final, hellish twist—residual Pennywise. He would let It take him, Richie knew. It wasn’t a decision that had to be made. He would let It come through and sink Its terrible teeth into his flesh, and he would disintegrate right there and then, in the room of the man he loved. How much loss, loss of one person, could anyone take? Well third time’s a charm, baby. Third time’s a charm.

While he waited he found the mini fridge. There wasn’t much in there—four vodka nips and two bottles of water. It was enough, Richie figured, for the duration of a shower, and there was always the fully stocked bar downstairs. Beverly had seemed to like it just fine. He drank a bottle of water first, then threw back one of the vodkas. He waited—counted—up to two minutes, then threw back another. One glance at the clock (it wasn’t even noon), and he threw back the third. As he was getting ready to unscrew the last one, the water turned off, and he noticed that he was holding his breath.

(A memory:

They’re in the clubhouse. He’s back on the hammock with Eddie, except this time they’re the only two there and they’re both lying in the same direction. It’s to read the same comic, the latest issue, they’re all caught up on the series. Before he turns the page, Richie asks, “done?” and Eddie nods his head against the crook of Richie’s neck, quietly says “mhm.” It’s the most quiet he’s ever been. Richie wonders if he can hear his heart beating, how rapidly. However else it feels, it also feels right: more home than home. Richie wants to lock this up forever.)

Eddie came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and gave Richie a funny look. He had carefully re-bandaged the wound on his face, but his chest was smooth and faultless, almost as though the giant knife-claw of a murderous clown hadn’t sliced through it. 

“You’re still here.” 

“Well—yeah.”

“I thought maybe you’d want to tell the others.”

_ Oh _ , Richie thought dumbly. He hadn’t been thinking of the others. Eddie was like a big, unavoidable glow, drawing Richie to him. Who were others, when Eddie was around? Richie felt all of thirteen again, anxious and fumbling. He realized this was the first time Eddie and him had been alone together since they returned to Derry. He was out of practice. If he could just take a moment to remember where the right jokes belonged, which ones were for _ covering up _ and which ones were for _ careful avoidance _, which ones distracted the target (Eddie) from ever coming close to the Truth (dirty, unwanted, impossible), Richie would feel a lot more comfortable.

Comfortable like stashing dirty magazines under your bed—out of sight—where your parents would never find them, tinged with the very debilitating fear that one day when your mom was cleaning, she would look under there anyway. Comfortable like a thief burying treasure in the backyard of a neighbor he knows owns a metal detector.

Not real comfort, then. Comfort with strings attached. A balloon waiting to be popped.

“Look,” Richie said, before he could stop himself, “I’ve gotta tell you something.”

Eddie began dressing, gave Richie a nod. 

“Don’t be mad, Eds.”

“If you tell me you fucked my mother one more time, Richie, I swear to god, _ I swear to god _, I’m walking out of here, and I’m going straight to Bev’s.” 

“That’s not—I’m not going to say that.” Under his breath, before he could help himself, he added: “But I did.”

Eddie bore daggers into him, but only crossed his arms. “What, then?”

“You know how after we all left Derry, everyone kind of moved on with their lives? You know, because we couldn’t remember anything. Even though, I guess technically, Bev must have had some sort of idea, subconsciously, since she kept seeing us all die. And maybe we all had something subconsciously terrorizing us, because when you repress things, they don’t really go away.” 

“Yeah I know what repression is, Rich.”

Richie glared at him. He knew he would start pacing, so he sat on the edge of the bed. “Anyway, Mike never forgot anything, he stayed here his whole life. But Bev got married, and Bill got married, and Stan got married, and you got married.”

“And what? You and Ben were out living playboy fantasies for 27 years?”

“I can’t speak for Ben,” Richie shrugged. Eddie crossed the room to sit down next to him. “I wasn’t. I wasn’t having any relationships.”

“Yeah, that’s what a playboy is, stupid, it’s when you travel the world and—”

“I know what fucking playboy means, Eddie! I wasn’t doing that either.” 

Eddie squinted at him for a moment, unclear where this was going. When realization finally dawned on him, his eyes widened.

“Oh my god, you’re still a virgin.”

"What?”

“You’re—you’re trying to tell me that you’re still a virgin! What the fuck! You’re—”

“I’m not a virgin.”

“You are! You’re a fucking virgin!”

“Eddie, no—”

“After all this time, after all the jokes you made, your nonstop bragging, I thought you told us all you fucked Gretta Keene behind the pharmacy, you—”

“Eddie, I’m _ fucking gay _,” Richie shouted. There was an abrupt, heavy silence, and he waited for the world to collapse in on itself. He waited, a part of him sure it was coming, for Eddie to recoil in disgust.

After a moment of staring at him, Eddie made a face. “You know gay people can get married now, right? Like, please tell me you know that. Gay marriage has been legal for at least two years—do you even watch the news?”

Richie stared back. He swallowed. “What?”

“I’m just saying, that’s a really shitty fucking excuse for not being married. Have you ever considered it’s your face?”

“_What? _”

“And why would I be _ mad _? Because you didn’t think to tell me? Well, yeah—maybe a little—but I’m more mad that you left me to die in a sewer by myself than anything else.”

“Okay, we need to get over that one.” 

“Oh yeah, when fucking hell freezes over.”

Neither of them said anything for a while, both glaring at each other, the way they used to—waiting for the other to break, to laugh, to tackle. 

Gently, Eddie put his hand on Richie’s forearm, rubbing it reassuringly. “You could still have a relationship, Rich. Your face really isn’t _ that _ bad.”

Richie snorted. “I’ve only ever loved one person.”

“Yeah? Maybe you should tell them.”

“I’m trying, bud.”

Eddie squeezed Richie’s arm and nodded. For one, fleeting moment Richie felt the conversation turning, shifting into something he hadn’t had the courage to consider in over twenty-seven years. Then Eddie opened his stupid mouth again.

“You need to write a speech or something? Where is he, L.A.?” 

“Oh, Eds,” Richie said. He put his face in his hands. “You’re really such a fucking moron.”

“How am I the moron? _ How _ am I the moron in this situation?” 

Richie looked at him then, and he looked so helpless and un-Richielike that a lump formed in Eddie’s throat, and he stopped speaking. 

“It’s you, you nerd,” Richie said softly, shrugging. “It’s been you all my life.”

Eddie’s brow creased. He looked like a little kid.

“C’mon,” Richie said, standing up. “We should tell the others you came back as a zombie bent on revenge.” 

Eddie stood up too; he took Richie’s hand before he went too far and turned him back toward him.

“Twenty-seven years.”

“Huh?”

“Did you remember me?”

“No,” Richie said. “It wasn’t that. I tried to, you know, be normal. I went out with women even though it wasn’t really fair to them, and I knew it, and I resented myself for doing it. But I couldn’t—the alternative was so awful, end-of-the-world awful. Bowers knew, and Pennywise knew, and I guess I convinced myself that everyone else who knew would react the same way—because it felt like the worst part of me. It was like… this gnawing, hungry feeling that just sat in my stomach and told me I could never be happy—” He cut himself off, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter. But at the Jade, when I saw you again, I couldn't decide if it was scarier to be near you or It.”

Eddie huffed out an angry little breath of air. They were still holding hands. “Thanks.”

“I thought you’d take one look at me and know.”

“What, between all your jokes about my mother and how boring my job is and how irrelevant I am?”

Richie cringed. Eddie almost felt bad about it.

“You steamroll through everything, Rich,” he continued. “You just come barging in with your dumb jokes and your terrible impressions and you think you’re being cool and subtle but you’re as subtle as a Mack truck. And you don’t even realize that you’re the most annoying person any of us have ever met, but we keep you around anyway because you’re like—the goddamn fucking sun, and the rest of us are—I’m just stuck in your orbit.”

“You’re too small to be a planet, Eds. You’re like the smallest angriest person I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m five-nine, that’s a completely average height!” Eddie yelled. “That’s like the national average for men, I hate you, I hate you so much. And on top of that, I will never fucking forgive you—”

“For leaving you in a sewer, yeah, I know.”

“No! For not kissing me all those years ago.” Eddie said, much too fast, then stopped, and looked for a moment as though he was trying to make up his mind. “For not kissing me now.”

Richie yanked him close before his brain could register thoughts. “Forgive me,” he said, and kissed him gently.

When he pulled back, Eddie had his eyes closed. He opened them and blinked, and before he could say anything, Richie kissed him again—harder this time. Later, maybe, he processed this moment as weightless, as being caught in time and space between past and present. A total lack of gravity. A supercut of every moment they’ve ever had together, and then of every moment Richie looked into the soul of himself and hated what he saw there (an amalgamation of derogatory terms and insults, snowballing into one another to one day land on top of Richie’s chest, suffocating him), of the two separate reels trying to reconcile with one another. And in the end, the former resolving the latter. In the end, Eddie.

When he pulled back this time, Eddie was holding his other hand.

“There’s no worst part,” he said.

“What?”

Eddie looked down at his feet, then back up to meet Richie’s eyes. “You said this was the worst part of you,” he said. “That’s not true. There’s no worst part of you. You’re all good.”

Richie almost smiled. “I didn’t even—that was a cowardly way of telling you.” 

“Which part?” 

“I love you.”

Eddie wrapped his arms around him, his faced pressed into the crook of Richie’s neck. “I know,” he said. “I love you too.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Hey Richie, can you shut the fuck up for one second? Can we have a moment here? I’m trying to figure out how to break the news to your mom.”

Richie threw his head back and laughed. He pulled Eddie closer, tighter.

“And what do you mean _ yeah, but _? What the fuck do you mean by that?”

Reluctantly, Richie pulled away again so he could look Eddie in the eyes. “I know you love me. It’s not entirely the same, is it?”

Eddie sighed. “I’m married.”

“Yeah, that’s,” Richie made a face. “I know that, because that’s how I started this conversation.”

“Okay, well, it was such a long-winded start that you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t exactly remember the beginning. Also, you fucking left me to die, so like." 

“_Eddie _.”

“I want to see the others. And then I want to sleep. Can you call Mike?” Eddie finally let go. He had that look on his face he sometimes got, a soldier preparing for war, when he got to the door.

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Richie?" 

“Yeah?”

“You were always the best part of my life.” He left the room, and Richie collapsed back onto the bed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey, losers,” Beverly said, raising her glass. “Can we make another oath?”
> 
> “Fuck no,” Richie said. Everyone laughed.

After he hung up with Mike, Richie found the rest of the Losers at the bar, in the lobby. He could hear them laughing from the staircase; and for a moment he just stood there, eyes closed, listening. Eddie’s voice was the loudest as always; Richie could live inside of it. He leaned against the corridor wall, wondering if he had made the right decision after all this time, wondering if he believed in portends, in second chances. Would it have changed anything, if he had not said what he had said? Did he feel relief, now? Was it an inherently selfish relief (wasn’t all relief inherently selfish)?

Yes, he felt relief. Eddie was alive. That was relieving.

Richie straightened up; he arranged his face. (He did this a lot.) He walked downstairs with a grin, into the space where everyone greeted him at once. Bill had an arm slung around Eddie’s shoulders and he was recounting everything Eddie had missed. _ Why didn’t I do that? _ Richie thought. _ What the fuck is wrong with me? _ But he kept smiling anyway. He let Beverly pour him a whiskey.

“You okay, honey?” She asked. 

“Yeah,” Richie nodded. “Yeah, of course.” He only realized he was still nodding when she gave him a sympathetic look.

“So much just happened. I think I’m just processing. Or—my body hasn’t realized it can stop grieving yet.”

“You two were always so close.”

Richie felt this was a good place in the conversation to avoid and drink, which turned out to be fine, because Beverly was not finished speaking.

“I know none of us want to stay, but it’s also hard to say goodbye. Maybe we ought to have one last dinner together before we part ways.”

“You want to spend another night in the dumpiest hotel on the east coast?”

“I want to spend another few hours with my oldest and dearest friends.”

“You know,” Ben said, sliding onto the chair next to Richie, “I’m not ready to let go of this yet either.”

“You people are insane,” Richie deadpanned. “You need to be put away.” 

“What are you complaining about now, Rich?” Bill said, his arm still around Eddie. He held a beer in his other hand, and looked the most relaxed any of them had ever seen him. Years had lifted off of his face; and, just as they had when they were children, the Losers could not help but feel as if they were in the presence of something incredibly special when he turned his gaze onto them. Bill Denbrough was half-man, half-hero. Whatever ugliness the terror of It had extracted in each of them, it paled in comparison to his particular light: the light that had brought them all together in the first place. It struck Richie as funny that he should still feel this way, even as an adult. But he loved Bill so fiercely—and so he had been able to love Ben and Beverly and Mike and Stan and Eddie. He wanted them to know him.

“These two nut jobs want to stay another night and have dinner.”

“I’m in,” Bill said, immediately.

“I’m in, but we’re not going to the fucking Jade of the Orient,” Eddie said.

Richie looked around at all of them. “Right,” he said, after a moment. “I’m in.”

* 

Eddie got into his car before Richie could protest.

“Hi,” Richie said. It came out as more of a question.

“We’re wasting so much gas—did you know the earth is in a complete emergency scenario? Like we’re about to be extinct and all of us still insist on taking separate cars. It’s irresponsible.”

Richie bit back a smile, looking over at the passenger seat. Eddie was deliberately looking straight ahead, his arms crossed. “You can just say you want to ride with me.”

“Well, I don’t, so.”

“_Ohh _.”

“Yeah, I'm just trying to save energy.”

“_Riight _.”

“Shut the fuck up and drive.”

They drove in silence. Eddie turned the radio on and punched at the channels for a couple of minutes before landing on the Rolling Stones, which was a mistake, because then Richie was singing, loudly. 

“No,” Eddie said and flicked the radio off.

“_Waaar, children! It’s just a shot away, it’s just a shot away! _” Richie continued, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

“I said no.”

“_Ooh, see the fire’s sweeping _—” The drumming got louder. Without the accompaniment of the song, Richie had no choice but to fill in for the instruments too.

“_No _—” 

“_BURNS LIKE A RED COAL CARPET _—”

Eddie put his face in his hands, hoping it would look like he was mortified, and not laughing. Laughing only ever encouraged Richie. Once he finally had a handle on himself, they were pulling into the parking lot. Mike had chosen the place again, being the only one of them that knew anything about modern Derry—Italian this time. While they were all ready to put the past behind them, the Losers agreed it would be a while before any of them wanted to see a fortune cookie again.

Richie unbuckled his seatbelt but Eddie caught his wrist before he could open the door. 

“Wait.”

“Yeah?”

“What—you’re just going to walk in there?” 

“Uhh,” Richie said. “The car won’t fit through the door.”

“You know what I mean, idiot.”

Richie pressed his lips together. “Do I.”

Eddie glared at him.

“Look, here—hold this for a second,” Richie said, extending his hand. Eddie took it absentmindedly, only registering a moment later when Richie laced his fingers with Eddie’s. 

“Bev told me you didn’t want to leave,” Eddie said quietly. “She said they had to drag you off of me.”

“I didn’t want to leave,” Richie confirmed. 

“That was really fucking stupid. You could have died.”

“I didn’t want to leave.”

“And now?”

“Nothing has to change,” Richie said.

“Everything has changed,” Eddie responded. He didn’t let go of him, though. 

“Is it really so terrible?”

“_ Yes _.”

Whatever Richie was expecting, it was not that. He dropped his gaze, unwound himself from Eddie’s hand, and was out the door without another word. Eddie scrambled out after him. 

“I’m _ married _, Richie,” Eddie said, louder than necessary. “I’ve made a whole life away from this place, away from these memories, away from all of you. And now you just come barging through like this, you want to mess it all up—”

“That’s right, Eddie,” Richie rounded the car to where Eddie was standing. He got in his face. “I want to mess it all up. Look me in the eye and tell me you’re happy and in love, that your life in New York is perfect and that you can’t wait to get back. Tell me that Myra is everything you ever dreamed of back when we were kids and we would lie out on the grass and talk about everything and anything and nothing at all. Tell me you two talk like that.”

“She’s a good person,” Eddie said firmly. “She doesn’t deserve to be hurt.”

“I’m not telling you to rip her fucking arm off, Eddie, I’m telling you to be honest with yourself.” 

“Oh yeah? Like you’ve been all your life?” 

Richie flinched. 

“I’m sorry,” Eddie said, rapidly, immediately. “I’m sorry, that—that was completely uncalled for.”

Before he could say anything else, Mike pulled into the spot next to them and got out of the car. Bill was with him.

“Hey guys,” Mike said with a grin. “You two are looking way too serious for Richie Tozier and a man who just came back from the dead.”

“We can be serious,” Richie said, mirroring Mike’s smile, like nothing was wrong. “We have super serious things to talk about, right Eds?” 

“You don’t know the meaning of that word, Trashmouth.”

“No, but your mom does.” 

“That doesn’t even—that doesn’t even make sense. No wonder you don’t write your own material.”

“Alright, you two want to finish this inside?” Mike asked. He had one hand on each of their shoulders and began steering them in. Bill followed on their rear, laughing; and Richie knew that the moment was over, that they weren’t going to broach the subject again. Did he want to? Did he have a slight, steady hope that someday someone would hold him responsible for his behavior? Was that fair to him?

There were moments were he felt righteous and justified in his hiding. Days, weeks, months would pass within this feeling—that he had had no other choice. That he was terrorized as a child; that an unnamed trauma had settled into his bloodstream long ago, and it dictated the course of his life. At other moments, there was guilt, and there was longing. Neither of these moments made him a bad person, but perhaps a fundamentally flawed person, as all people were. Then again, Richie thought. Then again—not all people spent their formative summer being chased around by a murderous, homophobic clown.

While he was thinking this through, he chose a seat at random. Eddie gave him a dissatisfied look from across the table. Mike took the seat to Eddie’s left and Bill took the seat next to Mike. They left an empty seat for Stan. Ben and Beverly arrived last, talking in hushed whispers and laughing. Richie could have envied them—his oldest friends, in love at last—but he didn’t at all. He glanced over at Eddie with the menu, studying it, and envied the menu instead.

“Are you allergic to everything on there or what?”

“I bet Eddie’s on one of those dairy-free, gluten-free diets, huh?” Mike cut in.

“It's not a diet, it’s a lifestyle. And just so you all know there have been _ multiple _ studies in this past year alone that prove gluten leads to colon cancer.”

“You’re making that up,” Bill said.

“Why don’t you look it up for yourself? You have a smart phone, don’t you?”

“Look it up where, Eds, Fox News Health? You know those people don’t believe in vaccines either, right?”

“Well that’s just ridiculous.”

Beverly clinked her glass with a knife like at a wedding. “Can we have some order please?” She gestured to the waitress, who had appeared while they were all talking over one another.

“Sorry,” Bill said to her. “This happens to us a lot.”

“It’s a curse,” Richie said seriously. The waitress laughed. She took their orders—Eddie’s being the longest—and left, promising to bring drinks immediately.

“She can tell how much we need them after listening to Eddie’s food plan—”

“Shut up, dickwad, get colon cancer for all I care.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Bill said, but he was laughing. They all were. They always did, when they were together. 

“So what’s next for everyone?” Ben asked, after their food had arrived. 

“I don’t know about you guys, but I think it’s time I get the hell out of this town,” Mike said.

“It’s _ past _ time,” Ben said with a grin. “Where to?”

Mike seemed to consider this for a moment, but he only shrugged. “Not sure yet. Somewhere warm. Somewhere with sunlight.”

“How about Florida?” Beverly said. 

“You remember that, huh?” Mike smiled. “Florida. Yeah, I still like that idea.”

“We’ll come visit.” 

“You better.”

“Hey, losers,” Beverly said, raising her glass. “Can we make another oath?”

“Fuck no,” Richie said. Everyone laughed.

“I’m serious—this one should be easier to keep. Swear to stay in touch this time. Swear we won’t forget one another again, or let life get in the way. It’s true that I spent my childhood scared shitless, but I also never laughed as much as I did when I was with you guys.”

“Aw, Bev. You’re gonna make me cry,” Richie said. He paused. “Again.”

He raised his glass. They all did.

“To us,” Beverly said. 

“To us,” the others said, in unison. 

“And to Stan,” she added. 

“And to Stan.”

They drank.

*

They drove back to the Derry Town House in silence, mainly because Eddie fell asleep on his feet halfway to the car. The others had had their moment of rest, but Eddie—apart from the time he’d been dead—had been awake for nearly 48 hours.

Unlike most of the people in Eddie’s life, unlike even Eddie himself, Richie knew he wasn’t prone to break. He knew Eddie had grit, as much as the rest of them, (if not more). Eddie’s resilience had spurred him through a life that perhaps a weaker man could not have tolerated. But just as Eddie should not have had to endure years of abuse just to prove his strength, he should not have had to perform an ancient indigenous ritual, or face off against a psychotic clown, or die and then act like everything was all right for it either. Eddie should not have had to do any of the incredibly difficult things he had to do in order to survive—not when he could have just as easily been given a different hand, an easier life.

These thoughts upset Richie in a way that his own circumstances didn’t, perhaps because much of them were self-inflicted, or perhaps—more likely—because he loved Eddie, and he did not love himself.

He parked the car and put his hand on Eddie’s shoulder. It was gentle, but Eddie jerked awake anyway.

“What. What happened?”

“Nothing, we’re here.”

“Why’d you scare me?”

“I didn’t scare you.”

“I just said you did!”

“You were asleep.”

Eddie mumbled something that Richie chose to ignore, because sometimes that was the only option to stay sane. He circled around the car and pulled Eddie out of it, and Eddie didn’t protest this time so Richie walked him to his room, an arm around his shoulders. He used to play games like this, as a kid, he remembered. They would lay in the grass together, knees pointed to the sky, elbows touching. They would arm wrestle for hours. Richie wondered now, how it would have been like, had they grown up together. Would he have grown out of the feeling? Would it have gotten old somehow, reaching across a room to find Eddie, his heart hammering in his throat?

There was no sense in wondering. He knew the answer, anyway.

When they reached his room, Eddie was nearly asleep again. Richie opened the door for him and took off his jacket while Eddie kicked off his shoes. He led him to the bed—yes, he held his hand. Eddie let him do this, because it was easier on his body, and—yes, because he wanted to. (Closeness had always been a problem, even as he got older. Eddie grew up shrinking from touch for a hundred different reasons, predominantly wrapped up in his mother’s treatment of him, in the terrible sticky things that resided in other people’s hands and mouths, in the way his sole desire was to be clean, clean, clean. Richie grew up withholding touch from himself like penance for a thing he had not known was a crime when he committed it. These things, which controlled so much of their lives separately, were somehow barred from the sliver of space they had carved out for one another. Richie’s hand in Eddie’s. Richie: an extension of himself. Richie: home.)

Eddie was too tired to be coy. He changed into proper pajamas because he was not a monster, then crawled into bed. Richie hovered, awkwardly.

“Are you coming or not? Either way, lock the door behind you.”

Richie locked the door. He stripped down to his boxers and stole one of Eddie’s hoodies from the drawer and turned off the lights.

“You’re being really normal about this,” he said, slipping into the bed.

“I literally came back from the dead, and this is the thing you want me to freak out over?”

“Oh, so you admit you were dead? You admit we didn’t just leave you there?”

Exhaustedly: “Beep, beep.”

“Sorry,” Richie whispered.

“It’s okay,” Eddie whispered back. He was lying on his back, with Richie on his side facing him. They did not touch, and that was okay. “I know you can’t help yourself. I know you need 24/7 babysitting or— _ hey _ !” Richie had smacked his arm. “I’m so tired, Rich. Can we just sleep?”

“Oh, so you don’t… you don’t want to like…”

Sternly: “Goodnight, Richie.”

“Goodnight, Eds.”

Eventually, Richie managed to stop smiling long enough to fall asleep.

*

When he woke again, the bedside clock was flashing 3:17 and Eddie was still enough beside him that he could tell he was awake, too.

“Hey,” he said quietly, poking Eddie’s ribs.

“Hey.” Eddie didn’t look at him. He was still lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, jaw tight.

“Uh oh,” Richie said. He waited approximately half a minute before shifting up onto an elbow. “Okay, what is it?”

Eddie didn’t respond right away, which was terrifying, which meant he was going to explode. Richie could almost  _ see _ it, the storm brewing, expanding, becoming more and more volatile. When they were kids and he was particularly upset about something, he would talk so fast that all of his words began to slur together. Richie found it endearing; he found everything about Eddie endearing although to admit it would be to surrender completely, and that could never happen.

“You—” Richie began, but before he could get a second word out Eddie sat up suddenly enough to stop him.

“Why am I here? Hm? How did I get out? How did I wake up with no blood and no scar and no-fucking-body left, surrounded by rubble, under a dying house? How did I find my way out, how did I find my way back? How did I survive that—Richie—I  _ felt _ It’s claw go through me, I could feel it in my fucking guts like, like, I don’t know, a fucking  _ kebob _ . How did I wake up from that? What if whatever happened to me un-happens, and I wake up, and I’m back there, I’m under the house again, and I’m fucking dead for real this time? Also—fuck  _ you _ —fuck you, Richie, I have a fucking  _ wife _ , you ruin everything, you yelled at that little kid at the restaurant and all I could think about was how stupid you are, and how if your life depended on mine I would fucking die for you, how—”

While Eddie talked, Richie sat up too, slowly, carefully, like creeping around a wild animal. Just as cautiously he pulled Eddie toward him, into his chest, and wrapped his arms around him.

“Fuck you,” Eddie said, muffled into Richie’s neck. Suddenly he was holding onto Richie, too. “Fuck you, fuck you, seriously,  _ fuck you _ .”

“God, I know you’re like having a mental breakdown here but I want that  _ so much _ .”

Eddie made a sound of disgust, and then he started to laugh. He pulled back to look Richie in the eye.

“You’re the worst. And I’m not actually a doctor but I think you have ADHD—have you ever had that checked out?”

“Uh, how’d we change the subject back to me?  _ You _ ’re basically a zombie.”

“Yeah, and I’m going to eat your fucking brains in your sleep.”

“That’s not hot,” Richie said seriously, shaking his head. “That is not the way to seduce a guy.”

Eddie laughed.

“Seriously—have you slept at all?”

Eddie shook his head. “I’ve just been thinking. I don’t want to die again. I don’t want this to all have been—an accident. I’m just stressed that if I can’t understand what happened, it’ll change, it’ll reverse, something else will happen. And that means I’m not in control of my body, and—”

“Wooow, Eds, you’re stressed? Tell me more about that.”

“Also you snore."

Richie cupped Eddie’s face in the palm of his hand. He looked so soft and serious Eddie couldn’t think of anything snarky to say.

“Sleep. I’ll keep watch.”

“No, man, you’re tired too.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look awful.”

“Fucking hell, Eddie. I’m fine, but thanks for that.”

“Okay,” Eddie said, feeling the fight go out of him.

“Okay,” Richie echoed, moving to lie back down.

“What are you doing?”

“Uh—”

“You’ll fall asleep if you lie down. I know you. I’ve seen it happen.”

Richie stared at him through the dark; he watched Eddie’s anxious face in the glow coming from the streetlight outside. He wanted to say something, but could not muster up the irritation required. Eddie was difficult—impossible even. He always had been, with his weird hang-ups and disorienting medical fears. And still, Richie would have walked on hot coals for him. He would have drank all the water in the quarry.

“Okay,” he said, and sat back up.

“Thanks, Richie.” Eddie settled back down. He turned his body so that his face was pressed into Richie’s outer thigh. It was almost unbearable.

“Yeah, no problem-o. Although you should probably take your shirt off, just in case something happens and you start to bleed out again, I’ll be—”

“Shut up, Richie.”

“Yeah, fine.”

*

When Eddie woke up again, it was morning, and he was still in one piece. Richie was playing a bubble popping game on his phone, but by the speed of his sleep-deprived limbs it did not look like he was doing very well. Eddie sat up, brows drawn together.

“Good—”

“I’m staying in Derry.”

“—Morning,” Richie finished, dully. “You what.”

“Until I figure out what happened in those sewers,” Eddie said, scrambling out of the bed. “I need to talk to Mike, and see if there’s some kind of pattern, if this kind of thing has happened before.”

“What? Look—no. I have a better idea. Let’s  _ leave _ Derry. Remember? That’s all we wanted to do when we were kids? And now we have the chance to live out our childhood dreams, like,  _ again _ , what other adults can say that?”

“I'm not leaving.”

“We can run away together.”

“I’m fucking married, Richie!”

Richie made a frustrated noise, the sound equivalent of a wad of paper being crumpled, then torn up. Eddie took this opportunity to go into the bathroom and brush his teeth. When he came back out he looked just as determined, but less hard around the edges. Richie sat on the edge of the bed, looking at his hands.

“I’m married,” Eddie repeated, softly.

“Well, do you want to be?”

“To Myra?” Eddie shrugged. “No.”

Richie stood up. Looking at him now, Eddie could see him at thirteen: chaotic and self-assured and terrified.

“You know this is hell for me, right?”

“I know, Rich.”

“I was expecting… maybe anger or hatred, or something. Like a total fucking annihilation of everything I’ve ever felt. But  _ this _ , you just acting like—ignoring that I—”

“I know,” Eddie said again, standing so close but still so quietly that Richie almost didn’t hear. Their hands brushed against each other. Richie could smell Eddie’s toothpaste.

“Alright, whatever. This entire weekend has been a nightmare, and I’m ready to just—”

Eddie kissed him. Richie stopped talking. Eddie held him in place and kissed him again, and this time neither of them tried to pull away. It happened in slow motion, dreamlike, behind a sheath of glass: Eddie walked him backwards and Richie sat back down on the bed, then laid back, then pulled Eddie on top of him, and all the while neither of them broke contact. Eddie put his hands on Richie’s face, and kissed him deeply, like he hadn’t kissed anyone before, (not in all these years, feeling unhinged and slightly distant from his own self, like seeing your own reflection at the bottom of a body of water and waving to it). All of his fears toppling down onto them and then away, banished by Richie’s soft breathing and familiar hands. And then Richie’s tongue was in his mouth, and the haze shattered, and Eddie was clearly on fire, every inch of him bruising, pressed against Richie’s legs and Richie’s chest and Richie’s lips.

He could feel Richie hardening underneath him and reached between them to cup him through his boxers.

“You don’t—” Richie started mumbling. “We can stop if—”

Eddie slipped his hand into Richie’s boxers, stroking him once, feeling an odd sort of satisfaction when Richie’s breath hitched.

“Okay, we can’t stop,” Richie said immediately. “I take it back. I take it back, we can’t—”

“Okay, are you going to talk the whole fucking time? Because I will leave you here, Richie, don’t test me, I will  _ fucking leave you here _ .”

Richie stopped talking and looked up at Eddie, wide-eyed. He opened his mouth to say something and then shut it again. Eddie kissed him once, then carefully pulled his underwear down to his thighs before wrapping his fingers back around him. He put his other hand in Richie’s, pinning it flat down on the bed above Richie’s head. Eddie hadn’t been with men before, could not remember how much he had thought about it growing up, or in the past twenty-seven years, but he knew what to do the way he had always known how to get back home, how he had known how to navigate a new city without ever using a GPS, how he had known Richie’s name before he had remembered the others.

Eddie twisted his wrist and Richie bit his lip, to keep from talking, probably. Eddie kissed him anyway to make sure, slowly stroking the length of him, tip already slick with precum.

“Eds,” Richie said into his mouth, and Eddie didn’t mind the way it sounded. He kissed Richie’s lower lip where Richie had bitten it and then along his jaw, keeping his movements steady. Gently, he pressed his thumb at the slit of Richie’s cock and earned the most beautiful sound—half surprise and half pleasure—Richie’s free hand digging into the small of Eddie’s back. He kissed his neck and into his hair and sped up, pumping his fist down to Richie’s base so that all he could hear was the blood pounding in his own head and the sound of Richie’s voice repeating his name.

“God— _ Eddie _ ,” Richie said, strained enough that Eddie knew he was on the verge, and then he was coming, mouth so hot against Eddie’s ear that Eddie nearly forgot himself and came too. Eddie stroked him through his orgasm until Richie swatted his hand away, lazily. Then they were both quiet, lying there. Eventually Richie pulled his pants back up, and turned into Eddie’s arms.

“Do you want me to—”

“No,” Eddie said quickly. “I need to find Mike.”

Richie shut his eyes and then opened them, as if that would cure what he was hearing. “What.”

“Mike, I said. Remember? Like, fifteen—maybe more like five—minutes ago?”

“Oh my god you’re already thinking about other men.” A pause. “Wait, was that—”

“You fucking bet,” Eddie grinned. He touched Richie’s cheek, and then he sat up. “I’m not going to ask you to stay.”

“Are you kidding me, Eddie?”

“You hate it here.”

“Yeah, dude, I almost fucking died like a hundred times before I could legally buy lottery tickets in this town. We all hate it here.”

Eddie sighed. He thought for a moment about his least favorite plot point, in any movie, in any circumstance; the tension between two characters who refuse to say what they really want, who think they know better, who hurt one another intentionally out of love. Two perfectly sane people, one of them pushing the other away even when it breaks their own heart. It was lazy. It created conflict out of nothing. There was enough of that in life without having to make it up, too.

“If something happened to you because you decided to stay in Derry a minute longer than you had to, I’d never forgive myself.”

“So don’t let anything happen to me, Eds.”

They looked at one another. “Okay,” Eddie finally said, and stood up. “I’m taking a shower.”

“A cold one?”

“Shut up, Richie. I can’t believe how ridiculous my life is right now.”

“Why, because you’re wearing a matching pajama set, or because you love me?”

A long pause. “Because I fucking love you.”

Richie beamed. It was enough. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You really think we had help down there? You really think anyone was looking out for us, besides us? Tell me one other time you’ve felt so completely deserted in your entire life, dude, honestly.”
> 
> “Like… the whole past 27 years, man.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm not thrilled with this chapter but whatever! it is what it is! tnx for sticking around if you got this far, i promise there's a plot beginning here somewhere

Mike was in the middle of packing up the library when they walked in, but he stopped what he was doing immediately to welcome them with bear hugs. The bags under his eyes had nearly vanished. The sense of calm in the air was palpable.

“Hey buddy,” Richie said with a grin. “Just remembered I murdered a guy here.”

“You murdered Henry Bowers, Rich. I wouldn’t call it a great loss for humanity,” Eddie said.

“Plus,” Mike said, “it was self defense. You saved my life.”

“That’s _right_!,” Richie said. “I’m basically a hero. Maybe we can put up a plaque or something--”

“We brought breakfast,” Eddie interrupted, holding up a bag. “Bagels and coffee. Thanks for sticking around, man.” 

“Hey, of course. I’ve got a section set up for you in the corner with most of the news clippings and articles we looked at back in the day, all the new ones I’ve collected from our summer and right before you arrived, plus my trusty copy of _ The History of Old Derry _. But… I’ve gotta tell you, Eddie…” Mike hesitated. 

“You don’t think we’re going to find anything we haven’t noticed before. That’s what I keep telling you, dude,” Richie said. 

“Yeah, and _ I _ keep telling you that it’s worth looking anyway.”

“How is this not a waste of time? We should be moving on with our lives, not--” 

“No one is asking you to fucking stay, Richie,” Eddie snapped. They glared at each other for several seconds, with Mike stifling a sigh behind them. 

“Fine,” Richie said. “I’ll start from the beginning. You work backwards.” 

“Why am I working backwards?”

“Because that’s how your brain works, Eds. It’s all messed up from years of risk analysis and those tiny hand sanitizers from Bath and Body Works.” 

“What the fuck is wrong with you Richie, honestly. Can you take anything seriously? How did you even survive to 40?” 

“You really like those hand sanitizers, huh? We can take it from here, Mikey,” Richie said, slapping a hand onto Mike’s shoulder. “Thanks again. Promise not to set anything on fire.” 

“I’m gonna hold you to that,” Mike replied with a smile. “I have a few things left to take care of in town, but I’ll be back in a couple of hours to help.” 

“You’re a good man, Mike,” Eddie said. He had already begun sorting through the papers, head bent over the table, chewing on his bottom lip. “You’re a far better man than Richie.” 

“That’s my cue,” Mike said.

“Yeah, please leave,” Richie nodded. 

Mike left. Richie grabbed a fistful of papers and sat down, pulling the chair Eddie had left empty entirely too close to him. 

“Sit or you’ll start pacing.” 

“So what? So what if I pace?”

“It makes me nervous.” 

Eddie chose to ignore this. The most recent of the clippings Mike had left him were from two days before the Losers had arrived in Derry. A 7 year old girl had gone missing in her own backyard, and blood had been found on a stuffed bear left behind. Forensics determined it had been her blood, though Eddie could have determined that, too, just by looking at it. It didn’t take a genius to know the difference between Pennywise and any old homicidal maniac-- just a whole lifetime of trauma. There was an interview with a neighbor; it was the same distant, clinical question and answer set given at every instance of It. Nothing ever changed in Derry, Eddie thought, so it was hard to believe that maybe things finally had. It was hard to believe he was safe.

Before the girl, there had been Adrian Mellon, whose death brought them all home. Eddie hadn’t known the details of the murder, and he was surprised to find _ Derry Daily _ even mention the words “hate crime” or “partner.” Derry was a town lost in the 1950’s, in the Stone Age, in its homophobia and racism and general bigotry. In its deal with the devil. Derry did not acknowledge its long history of violence against marginalized communities, or its habit of marginalizing people, of smothering them, of making them so small they forgot one another. Standing next to Richie now, the warmth of him echoing off of his body, it was almost absurd to think that Eddie could have forgotten him. It was like forgetting yourself. 

“What’s that?” Richie asked. Eddie hadn’t realized how aggressively he had been frowning at the page. 

“Nothing,” Eddie replied, immediately. He did his best to sound breezy. “It’s just tragedy after tragedy.”

“Yeah,” Richie said, softly. Eddie had the sudden urge to crush him to his chest, but he shook it off. He carefully slipped the article about Adrian between some other papers, and sat down. 

“I think we’re looking at this the wrong way, anyway,” Richie said. 

“What do you mean?”

“I think we need to focus on the sewers. Everything that happened above ground-- with the exception of the first time we hurt It at Neibolt-- was out of our control. _ It _ decided when and where to find us. _ It _ decided what to show us, how to catch us off guard. But under ground, on It’s turf, I think something was on our side, Eds.”

“No,” Eddie said, shaking his head furiously. It was like snapping a book shut. “Nothing was on our side down there. We were completely alone.”

“Eddie.”

“You really think we had help down there? You really think anyone was looking out for us, besides us? Tell me one other time you’ve felt so completely deserted in your entire life, dude, honestly.”

“Like… the whole past 27 years, man.”

Eddie finally made eye contact, looking so startled Richie wanted to take it back. Before he had a chance to, Eddie’s mouth was on his, kissing him so hard it bruised. When he pulled away, just as abruptly, Richie had one of his incredibly rare moments of speechlessness. 

“I swear to fucking god,” Eddie said, “I’ll burn this fucking town to the ground before we forget each other again.”

It was overwhelming. It was easier to laugh it off than accept it. “_Aww_,” Richie said. 

“Shut up.”

“You like me _ so _ much.”

“Shut the fuck up, Richie.” But he was already standing up, and he was already crawling onto Richie. Truthfully they were too big for this, and the chairs were wooden and uncomfortable and Eddie’s knees didn’t fit so he wound up digging one of them into Richie’s thigh instead, which _ hurt _ , and when Richie wordlessly pulled him close they were much too cramped and his shins already ached, but they were _ together _, chest to chest and Eddie sitting imperfectly in Richie’s lap, looking him in the eyes. 

“I like you so much,” Eddie whispered. “But that won’t stop me from kicking your ass if you make fun of me for it.”

Richie stared at him. “Why am I turned on?”

Eddie rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. Everything was different, but it felt normal. Maybe that’s what love is, Richie thought. Maybe it’s the entire world in retrograde, forever, fish flying and birds swimming and sunglasses at night, and even still, the person you would most like to survive an evil clown attack with is holding your hand and affectionately calling you an idiot. 

“No, really, should we get it on in the library?”

“_Get it on_?” Eddie said. “What are you, fucking fifteen?”

“I thought _ fuck _ would offend your delicate sensibilities.”

“My _ what_?”

“You heard me. C’mon, let’s do the deed.”

“It’s actually getting worse.” 

“What’s getting worse?”

“You. You're so embarrassing. And you have groupies! I can't believe you have groupies,” Eddie said.

“Remember how you used to have two fanny packs, Eds? How am I the embarrassing one?”

“It’s just a part of your personality.” 

“A part of my charm,” Richie corrected. 

“I didn’t say that.” 

“You didn’t have to.” 

“You’re literally a _ child_.” 

A moment passed. “I’m making up for lost time,” Richie said with a frown. “Also I don’t know if it’s obvious but I—” 

“Have no game?”

“No,” Richie said, suddenly sounding testy. “I have game. I have _ serious _ game.”

Eddie raised an eyebrow. “What were you saying?”

“Nothing. Never mind.” 

“Come on.”

“_No _.”

“Are you really going to be like that?”

“Be like what?” Richie asked. He was picking at an invisible piece of lint on Eddie’s knee. 

“Upset.”

“I can’t be upset? I don’t get to have feelings? What do you think I am, Eds?” 

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about,” Richie said. “You all run around acting like you’re the only ones with shit going on. You don’t think I don’t have shit going on? That I don’t have trauma?” 

Eddie frowned. “I don’t know, I just—” 

“You just what? Think I’m a punchline? I’m only here for comedic relief?”

“I—”

Richie met his eyes, finally. There was a brief moment, the look on his face so devastating that Eddie couldn’t speak, feeling panicked and out of sorts, before Richie burst into laughter. Eddie processed, briefly. He felt his expression darken.

“What. The _ fuck_.” He scrambled off of Richie. 

"_Nooo_, don’t,” Richie said, between bouts of laughter. 

Eddie smacked his chest. “You’re a dick. I hate you.”

“You don’t hate me.”

“I do.”

“You _ don’t_." 

“I’m the only person on earth who can deal with you. No one else would have the patience.”

Richie grabbed hold of his wrist. “You’re the only one I want to deal with me.”

“You’re like eight years old.”

“Now I’m eight? Why am I de-aging? You looked so serious, Eds. So sad and serious, it was like kicking a puppy." 

“I thought I hurt your feelings, you piece of shit.”

“You kinda did.”

Eddie stared.

“I’m just, like. You know. I can’t really express it. So I guess I deserve to not be taken seriously.”

“_What_?”

Richie didn’t respond. His expression was unreadable and far away; he _ felt _far away—untethered suddenly, shut out from the library, looking in on himself. He supposed it was normal. He supposed it would take years of therapy—decades—for any of them to come out on the other side feeling okay. He thought: what you see in the movies, the exciting, glamorous parts, the uphill climb to defeat a common enemy, the epic final battle—that was all well and good, but that wasn’t the real story. The real shit, the life shit, were the things that no one wanted to see because they were hard to look at, and ugly, and oppressive. The remembering.

“If we hadn’t made that promise, Stan would still be alive,” Richie said, quietly. And because he looked like he needed to continue, Eddie waited. “We were thirteen years old and already traumatized. We cut our palms and made a stupid oath and because of it our friend is dead and you’re sitting in a thousand year old library trying to figure out if you’ll die again. We were—we were fucking _ kids _, man. How does that ever go away?” 

“It went away before,” Eddie said. “We forgot and we were better for it.” 

“You keep saying shit like that, I’m going to get the wrong impression.”

“Will you please be serious and tell me you know that isn’t what I mean?”

Richie squinted. “What do you mean then, Eds?”

Eddie shrugged. “Ignorance is bliss, I guess. Maybe… our lives weren’t perfect. But they weren’t filled with nightmares, either. They weren’t filled with everything we missed out on, or everything we went through together, because we didn’t know. And maybe we get really good things with the knowing, but are they canceled out by the really bad?”

The sentiment was so typically Eddie that Richie could understand why he chose the career he chose, and it made him want to scream. He didn’t. He drew in a breath. 

“The hole in my life went away when I saw you at the Jade.”

Eddie didn’t say anything. He bit his lip.

“I love you,” Richie said.

“Is it worth all of this?” 

“_Y__es_,” Richie said, surprising even himself. 

Eddie nodded. Slowly, he crawled back onto Richie’s lap, and wrapped his arms around his shoulders and settled against his chest. 

“You like me _ so _ much,” he whispered. 

Richie chuckled softly; Eddie could feel the warmth of it vibrating through his body and he held onto him tighter, out of unfiltered love and rampant, aching necessity. It was such a brief, grounding feeling of peace that neither of them noticed they weren’t alone in the room anymore.

“You two look comfortable,” came a softly gleeful voice from behind them. They pulled—jumped—apart. Eddie scrambled up, straightening his already straight polo. 

“Doesn’t anyone knock anymore?” he said angrily, as angrily as he could ever be toward Beverly. She laughed. 

“We’re in a library, you knew we were coming to help, and you two—” she paused. “I’ve known you since you were thirteen years old.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug, looking from Eddie to Richie, fondly. 

“What’d I miss?” Ben asked, coming up from behind her. He put an arm around her waist and Richie could not help but think that maybe sometimes things did work out, and they could be easy, and they could be simple. He was not half the man Ben was, but maybe he deserved a sort of happiness too. Richie didn’t feel one way or another about religion, or fate, or divine intervention, but maybe it was that the Losers had been through enough that God had decided to move on, point his fearsome eyes at someone else, and leave them be. 

“Nothing,” Beverly said with a smile and a wink aimed at Eddie.

And when Ben was distracted, looking over at Bev like she was the inventor of grilled cheese, Richie mouthed _ Love you _ to her. 

“You two really want to help?” Richie asked. 

“Of course we do,” Ben replied. “Bill’s on his way, and--”

“Guys?” Eddie’s voice was small and thin. Richie hadn’t noticed him sit back down, but he was gripping the edge of the table, knuckles white with strain, head hung low. 

“Hey, what’s—” Richie began, but Eddie looked up at him and the sight of it cut him off. It was the same look, the final look, and Eddie only just had time to sound out the “R” in Richie’s name before his chest burst open. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was blood on his hands and it was Eddie’s. The blood on his hands was Eddie’s. Eddie’s blood was on his hands. 
> 
> “Eds,” he heard himself saying, and his voice sounded far away and foreign. “Stay with me, okay? You gotta stay with me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yell at me on twitter! @umzeynep :)

For a moment, there was nothing. No sound, no vision, no bodily feeling. No heart beating in Richie’s chest, no breath flowing in or out of his lungs. 

And then it all came back in a rush. 

The panic that had grown inside of him in that one moment was so thick he could taste it; he could have given it a name. Instead, Richie flung off his jacket, briefly gagging on the familiarity of the gesture, and pressed it hard into Eddie’s chest. Bev was already on the phone with 911 when Richie began to regain his senses, so that was good, that was covered, that should have made it easier to breathe. It didn’t. He had a dim awareness of Ben by his side, hands over Richie’s, pushing down. 

There was blood on his hands and it was Eddie’s. The blood on his hands was Eddie’s. Eddie’s blood was on his hands. 

“Eds,” he heard himself saying, and his voice sounded far away and foreign. “Stay with me, okay? You _ gotta _ stay with me.”

He heard Eddie hum something in return, then laugh—it sounded like choking. “Richie,” he said. “I gotta tell you something.”

“No,” Richie said this time. “Nope. You’ll have to save it buddy. You’ll have to wait until we have you stitched up and—God—” He let out a sob. “God, please.”

He could hear sirens, but they were miles, weeks, years away. _ There’s no getting out of this _ , a voice in his head told him. _ You got a good couple of hours, though, Tozier. What more could you possibly expect? _ He tried to shake it off; he tried to focus on the way he could still feel Eddie’s heart beating; he could still hear him breathe. _ You should have loved him sooner. You should have saved him. You shouldn’t have been so scared for so long. _ Eddie’s hands were on his hands, squeezing them weakly, covered in blood. _ You should have tried harder, you should have never let him go, you should have never let him come back, you should have been more careful _. 

“Rich,” Eddie began again.

“_ No _.”

“You’re—” A sigh. A struggle for air. “Getting your fucking tears in me.” He grinned. There was blood in his mouth, too. 

“Shut up,” Richie said. “Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up.” 

“They’re here,” Bev announced, swinging open the doors. There were more hands on him, suddenly, Bill’s, and the paramedics, pulling him away, getting to Eddie. 

“How did this happen?” he heard one of them ask.

“Is there really any time for that?” someone else—Bill—was speaking. “We need to get him to the hospital.”

_ Big Bill _ , Richie thought, distantly. _ Thank god for you _.

The ride to the hospital was a blur, and most of what came after. Richie rode with Eddie in the back of the ambulance because it only took one look at his face to know he’d rather lose a limb than let go of him again. They made him sit on his hands so the paramedics could do their jobs. He couldn’t feel them, anyway—his hands, his face, his body. He couldn’t feel the blood anymore either, which was somehow worse, sickeningly Richie knew he could not stand the thought of losing whatever bit of Eddie he could at present keep.

_ Bury us together _ , he thought. _ Under Neibolt, into the bridge, at the bottom of the canal. I’ll crawl in with him but for fuck’s sake bury us together _. 

He was in the ambulance, and then he wasn’t. He was sitting in a waiting room, and then he was walking to the bathroom to wash his face, and then his knees were giving out, and then he was on the floor, looking as bewildered as he felt. Bev was there, and she was helping him back up, she had her arms around him, bone-crushing, the kind of hold that remembered being thirteen, lying on each other’s beds with girly magazines and promising never to tell, being fifteen, practicing for some dance that never seemed to come, on the street laughing into each other’s chests, being seventeen, replacing a thousand pinky-promises with a secret handshake, one that meant _ I will love you until the teeth fall out of your mouth, and then I will be there in the nursing home to laugh and love you forever still _. Bev was there now, holding Richie’s face and wiping the tears off of his cheeks.

When he had pulled himself together, finally, he sat between Beverly and Mike, and they each held one of his hands as they waited for news from the surgeon.

“He’ll pull through,” Ben said. “He came back from the dead, and he’ll come back from this.”

Bev smiled at him, and there was so much love in it Richie looking on thought his heart would burst. He squeezed her hand and pressed a kiss to her shoulder.

“Did I tell you I’m happy for you, Bev?” 

She smiled at him too, now. The love wasn’t the same, but it was still there, golden and kind. “You didn’t have to. I know your heart, Tozier.”

He managed a smile back.

“In a few hours, I’ll be saying the same thing to you.”

Richie laughed and it was a watery sound, his chest shuddering. “Bev, we’re finally—if I lose him again I’ll eat a fucking bullet.”

Her expression sharpened. “Don’t you dare start with that. Don’t even _ think _ about that.”

Richie didn’t reply, but he had the sense to look apologetic. 

She squeezed his hand once more and stood up. “I’ll get us coffees. Maybe something to eat?”

Richie shook his head. “I don’t think I can keep anything down.”

She nodded and left. Mike shifted next to him.

“I didn’t mean that,” Richie said after a moment, even though he did. “The bullet thing. I don’t know why I said it.”

“No one’s going to hold your grief self against you, man. You know that.”

“Yeah,” Richie nodded. “But the rest of you—you’re all holding it together so well, and I’m—”

Mike shrugged. “It’s different with you two. It always has been. If something had happened to Beverly, you know, we’d all hold it together for Ben. You included. Or if Bill…” he trailed off, looking at his shoes. Richie looked at him very, very carefully, and knew that it was not his place, not this time, to comment.

“Has it always been that obvious?”

“Yeah,” Mike said with a laugh. “But I mean, even if it wasn’t like a—like a ‘get married and have 14 kids’ thing—I mean, I don’t think any of us thought about it too hard, to know if that’s what it was, it was clearly a _ forever _ thing.”

“I felt forever for all of you, though. I thought that’s what we were supposed to be. The Loser’s Club." 

“I know. But you chose us. And after all this time, after you forgot, you made the choice again. You chose to stay.”

“You don’t think I chose Eddie?”

“Well let me ask you this. Does it matter what I think?”

Richie raised an eyebrow. “You started this conversation, you might as well keep going. Psychoanalyze away.”

“That’s really not what this is.”

“Look, it’s been a long day, don’t get on my ass about my shitty wording, or whatever.”

“Okay, okay. I think in some sense, in some way, your life chose Eddie. Whether that was a conscious decision is a wholly different matter.”

“Like… what? Like we’re soulmates or something? Like this was all predestined? God _ Himself _planned it?”

“Maybe,” Mike nodded. “Maybe there’s more than one way to put it. But it all means the same thing.”

“You really believe in all that stuff, don’t you.”

“We fought a killer clown from outer space just two days ago. You wanna draw the line here?”

Richie laughed. “That’s fair. I guess we’re just crazy people now.”

“We lived through a horror movie, Rich. I think maybe we’re going to need to believe in something good for a change.”

“Maybe,” Richie said slowly. “I’m not making any sudden decisions until Eds gets out of surgery. And for the record, if I told him this, that Mike Hanlon thinks some guy sitting on a throne in the clouds waved a wand at the beginning of time and decided two idiots from Derry, Maine were going to meet and lose each other and meet again all because of a bitch clown who got off on eating children and committing hate crimes—he’d think you were crazy, too. In fact, I’m gonna tell him now—”

“I don’t think they’ll let you in there, buddy.”

“No, but it’d be worth it to see the look on his face when I told him I walked in on his surgery without even washing my hands.” 

Mike laughed at that. "_ You _’d wind up in surgery.”

Bev and Ben had come back with coffee for all of them, and she handed Richie his before taking her seat again. Bill finished a quick conversation with Audra and came back around, too. It only took one look between him and Ben to silently decide to sit on the floor, in front of Richie. None of them wanted to be too far from one another—not even one seat down.

“That’s disgusting,” Richie said, nodding at his friends at his feet. “Eddie’d hate that. Why are waiting rooms set up like this? Whose idea was it to make us look like sitting ducks? Are we waiting to be executed?” 

“Beep beep,” Bill and Bev said in unison.

“I bet the subconscious part of him is really loving this,” Richie continued. “Really clean people standing around him, just being clean.” 

“I hope they’re not _ just _ being clean,” Ben said. “I mean, I hope they’re doing other things in there.” 

Richie nodded, seriously. “Yeah. I hope they’re giving him a surprise tattoo.” 

Everyone laughed.

“How long has it been?” he asked. “Hasn’t it been a really long time?”

“Just a few hours,” Bill replied. “I talked to one of the nurses; she said it could take a while. He’ll pull through, man.”

“Totally,” Richie said. “Totally. Just like last time. When he died. Remember?” 

No one said anything. 

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought.”

*

It did take hours, and when the doctor came out into the waiting room Richie could feel the ground shift underneath his feet — although he was still sitting — the kind of awake that hurts — sharp in the eyes, paralyzed at the edges. He kicked at the nearest body, Ben’s, who dutifully began waking up the rest of the Losers; and before Richie’s brain could remember how to form words the surgeon took off her mask and gave him a tired smile. 

“He’s stable,” she said. 

“What? What?”

She nodded. “He’s going to be okay. You and your friends can breathe.”

Richie stood up like he’d heard a gunshot. “When can we see him?”

“I’m afraid visiting hours are over, and the only exception is for immediate family, but—”

“We _ are _ his immediate family,” Beverly insisted. “There’s no one else.”

“We found his wife’s contact information on his phone,” the doctor continued, “so that isn’t necessarily true—” “No!” Beverly exclaimed. Richie sat back down. “— _However _ she showed no interest in taking a train up here. I can let one of you in.”

They looked at Richie. He stood back up. He still hadn’t regained the feeling in his hands or face. Not trusting himself to speak, he followed the surgeon wordlessly down the longest hall of his life, then turned right into the second longest hall of his life — _seriously, who designed this place? _ \-- then wound up outside a door, feeling like a ghost. Maybe the surgeon noticed, probably she had been doing this for long enough that she could tell right off the bat when a man was on the verge of a mental breakdown, but she waited for a moment, and touched Richie’s arm. 

“The worst is over,” she said firmly. “It’s not going to be overnight, but he’ll come out of this just fine.”

Richie nodded.

“And it’s not going to be now, but I expect one of you will eventually want to tell someone what happened.”

_ Yeah, definitely, _ Richie thought. _ We can start at the beginning of time and go from there. It’s a great story — you’ll really get a kick out of it after you’ve called the cops. _ But he nodded again, anyway. She gave him a final smile, and walked away.

When he walked into the room he felt a rush of panic so nauseating he worried he would throw up on the spot, only just stopping because the fear of all 5 feet 9 inches of Eddie Kaspbrak waking up and screeching at the top of his lungs over _ more vomit _ was stronger. God. Richie loved him. He looked so tiny in that bed, wrapped up from his shoulders down to his hips in thick bandages, breathing quietly (but _ breathing — _but breathing, but breathing, but breathing, _ alive _) that Richie was instantly taken back 27 years to another Eddie, even smaller, shaking with fury in another hospital bed. 

He resisted the urge to crawl in next to him. Richie instead allowed himself to brush a finger against the knuckles of Eddie’s right hand, then to pull the plastic hospital chair over, and sit in it, and stay silent.

He did not know how much time passed. 

He fell asleep, and he woke up. He fell asleep again, head smooshed down into the side of the bed this time, and then the sun was rising. When he reached for his glasses he felt Eddie stir beside him. Slowly, groggily, they blinked at one another.

“Hey,” Richie whispered, feeling outside of himself again.

“Hi,” Eddie said. His voice was gravel and blood, but he smiled. “Did we win?” He took a breath, and he closed his eyes. “Did we kill It?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What happened?”
> 
> “Well,” Richie said. He licked his lips. “We bullied him into dying, and then we crushed his batshit little alien heart with our bare hands—which was more gross than cool—and then Neibolt came down on our heads.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some talk of abuse, victim-blaming, and trauma. 
> 
> i hope this is still interesting and thank you so much if you're still here!!

“What?” Richie asked. “What?” 

Eddie took a breath, and it sounded shakier than Richie would have liked to hear. “Did we kill It?” he asked again. “The deadlights—you—” 

“Yeah,” Richie said, swallowing. He felt sicker than he did two minutes ago, but not as sick as in the library, with his hands covered in blood. “Yeah, buddy we did.”

“What happened?”

“Well,” Richie said. He licked his lips. “We bullied him into dying, and then we crushed his batshit little alien heart with our bare hands—which was more gross than cool—and then Neibolt came down on our heads.”

“How’d you get me out of there?”

“I—we—it’s funny you should ask that, because we didn’t exactly, and you’re going to blow your fucking lid when I explain the whole thing over again, because our lives are one big joke, mine just a little bit sicker and bigger, but anyway, don’t shout at me because you might fuck up your stitches, and—” 

Eddie’s face broke into a grin. Slowly, he reached out and tugged on Richie’s collar. “Calm down. I remember, stupid.” And he started to laugh. 

Richie blinked at him, expression blank. “Are you fucking kidding.” Eddie was still laughing, the sound hoarse and crackling and beautiful. “Eddie. Eddie. Eds. Eduardo. Fucking—_ really _? You’re fucking with me? Eddie, shut up.”

“That’s for the library,” Eddie said, looking spectacularly proud of himself. “And for everything else, ever, since the day we met.” 

“That could have traumatized me for life, you little shit.”

“You’re already traumatized for life. Look at you.”

“Look at _ you _!”

Eddie grinned. “How long have you been here?”

“I don’t even know.” Richie took his glasses off, rubbed his face with both hands. “I don’t know. You know sometimes I wish I had a hearing problem instead? You’re great to look at but you’re so annoying that I—”

“Shut up and kiss me, Tozier.” 

“Yeah, okay,” Richie said, leaning in. He kissed Eddie, softly at first, then a little bit harder when he was confident that Eddie wouldn’t break. He pulled away and put his head back into his hands. 

“Hey, it was a joke, okay? I didn’t think you’d be this upset.” 

Richie shook his head. He looked up, and he was smiling. “I’m not upset, man. I’m… really relieved.”

“Oh.” A beat. “You should be.” 

Richie laughed. “Move over.”

“_Nothing _ is going to happen in this hospital bed.”

“I’ll keep it PG-13.”

“_G _,” Eddie insisted, scooting his body to the far side of the bed. “And take off your shoes you fucking monster.”

Richie kicked them off and got in under the covers. Gently, so gently that it rendered Eddie wordless for a moment, he put his arms around Eddie and scooped him closer. Neither of them smelled particularly good, and there were aches rolling up and down Eddie’s body, and some of his blood was still caked onto Richie’s shirt, but it was good anyway, it was right anyway. They laid there like that, somehow the most peace either of them had felt all week. 

After hours or minutes, Eddie broke the silence. “Where are the others?” 

“Outside. I think? Visiting hours were over when you got out of surgery, and the doctor didn’t want to let any of us in, because legally we’re not immediate family, or some homophobic bullshit like that.”

Eddie laughed. “I can’t help but feel like we wouldn’t be in this situation right now if hospital policy was homophobic.”

“Whatever, Eds. You don’t know what you’re saying, you’re on drugs.”

Eddie pinched Richie’s side. 

“_Ow— _I guess I can go get them.”

“Mm, in a minute.” 

They settled back into not talking, but eventually Richie’s body grew so still and self-conscious that Eddie could tell he was deliberately keeping his mouth shut. It was like a machine breaking down and trying against all odds to be subtle about it. Eddie sighed. “Okay—what is it?”

“They called your wife but she didn’t come,” Richie said, immediately. “She didn’t even bother asking the doctor if you were okay, or what happened, or when you could leave.” 

“Oh,” Eddie said. He sounded tired. “I called her before we drove to the library to end things. When you were in the shower. I actually can’t believe you didn’t hear her screaming at me through the walls.”

“What?”

“Are you fucking deaf now, you just said you wanted a hearing problem and—”

“Eds,” Richie pulled back, just enough so they could look at one another. He was frowning. “She yelled at you?”

“It’s fine. It’s over.”

“I thought you said she was a good person.”

“I lied.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I just fucking did, okay?”

“_Why _?”

“Because!” Eddie said, giving Richie a small push. “Because I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. Because I wanted to give _ myself _ the benefit of the doubt, and think for a second that maybe I didn’t marry my mother, that my life wasn’t that sad and outrageous, that maybe she had some kind of redeemable quality that made everything else she did okay.” He was breathing hard now, getting worked up, his brows furrowed. Richie wanted to kiss the space between them. “I wanted to have a reason to go back, and put this nightmare behind me.” 

It was impossible to ignore the flash of hurt in Richie’s eyes, as much as Eddie wanted to have not seen it, and even more not have been the sudden cause of it. “Not you,” he said, quickly, quietly. “Never you.” 

“Well you just said,” Richie said, hating how his voice sounded, like a wounded child, the blood pounding in his ears. Eddie reached out, tentatively, and cupped his cheek. 

“We all went through this horrible, dark thing. This thing that wanted to eat us. But I remember when we stood outside of Neibolt for the first time, and Bill said walking into that house was easier than walking into his own.” Eddie paused. “I walked right back to the thing that made me feel the most scared and the most terrible about myself when I was a kid. If Myra’s as bad as my mom was, what kind of person does that make me?”

“I don’t understand how you could think either of those women reflect on _ you _as a person.” 

“I knew how she was. I married her anyway. Maybe I deserved to have to put up with it.” 

“Are you serious, Eds?”

Eddie shrugged, avoiding eye contact. Richie remembered this, too, from childhood—how Eddie got in his own head, how he refused to listen to anyone but Richie. Days when not even Bill could get through to him—and they had _ all _ loved Big Bill, hadn’t they? But that was hero worship; that was devotion. Eddie didn’t look at Richie and see something so unattainable that he became distant. Eddie looked at Richie and saw someone he could stand shoulder to shoulder with. 

“Listen to me,” Richie said, when Eddie did not speak. “I mean it. That’s so fucked up. I think you know that, too, I think you know how truly fucked up that is, and that, like, I don’t know how to talk this through with you in a sensitive way, or whatever, because I don’t know how to talk about anything serious and all of us need… an extensive amount of therapy, anyway. So what do I know. I’m not qualified. But look me in the eye and tell me that if it were any of us in your situation, with what you went through as a kid with your mom, you would feel that they deserved what came after. Look at me and tell me that you think Bev deserved—”

“_No_,” Eddie said, sharply, looking up. “Of course I don’t fucking think Bev deserved—” He couldn’t finish so he just shook his head. “Of course not.” 

“So why are you such an asshole when it comes to yourself?” 

“I don’t know, Richie.” 

“I love you, you know.”

Eddie half-smiled. “I know.”

“And if you want,” Richie took a breath, “I mean, I don’t know if you wanna take some time to be alone and buy a lot of weird plants and find a hobby that’s actually fun, or if you want to… do this, with me, but. If you want, I was planning on— I’ll try so hard to make you happy. If you want that.” 

Eddie blushed. It turned Richie’s whole world upside down. It felt like his body was accelerating at an abnormal speed, and if someone somehow slammed down on the breaks, his soul would fucking leave it. 

“Why can’t we buy weird plants together?” 

“We can do that,” Richie said, too quick. He was smiling like a maniac. “We can buy every weird plant we find.”

“Okay,” Eddie said with a nod. “Let’s do that, then.” 

*

When the rest of the Losers were finally let into the room, Eddie had rested long enough that he was beginning to get antsy. Richie was fast asleep with an arm slung across his body, which did not hurt somehow, although the drugs should have worn off by now. He might not have had Mike’s extensive collection from the library, but Eddie had a smartphone, and he didn’t believe in wasting time. He was still typing furiously when Bill snatched the phone out of his hand.

“Give it back,” Eddie said automatically, then looked to see everyone in the room. He smiled. “Hi. Thanks for sticking around, you didn’t have to do that, but hand my phone over.” 

“You should be resting,” Bill said. 

“Yeah, man. For once Richie has the right idea,” Mike said, raising his eyebrows in Richie’s direction. Eddie, he noticed, instinctively brushed a strand of hair away from Richie’s face, but didn’t comment.

“I rested plenty. I’m all patched up. You guys are the ones that spent the night in a cold waiting room.”

“It wasn’t that cold,” Beverly said with a smile. “And you really should be taking it easy.”

“How much easier can I take it? He’s been sleeping for hours, half of my body is asleep and I can’t move.”

Richie stirred against him, finally, then shot right up. “What happened?”

“You drooled on me,” Eddie said.

Richie wiped at his mouth, still groggy, then reached for his glasses. “What are we doing?” 

“We need to get a move on,” Eddie said before anyone else could speak. “We have to go back to the library and figure this out before my body tries to kill me again.” He almost flinched at the words as they came out, and Richie could nearly read his mind: _ She always said this would happen. _

“Okay,” Richie said.

“What?” Bev said, shaking her head. “No way. You need to stay here and recover. Has the doctor even been in yet?”

“Yeah, look, it won’t matter how much I recovered now if this happens again. My body is—I don’t _ know _ what’s happening to my body. I don’t know if I came back to life, or if I was ever actually dead, or why my scar disappeared, or why it opened up again.” 

“How does it look now?” Ben asked. “Does it hurt?”

“No, I actually can’t feel it at all.” 

Ben frowned, looking thoughtful. Bev put a hand on his arm. “What is it?”

“I was just thinking of Neibolt again. When Pennywise started carving into my body… I could feel it, I thought he’d kill me. But when you smashed the mirror…”

“...You were fine,” Bev finished. 

“What are you guys talking about?” Eddie asked. 

“I think that whatever you need to do to put a stop to this is in that house, Eddie.”

“The house was destroyed,” Richie cut in. “It came down on our fucking heads, did you all forget?”

There was silence. 

“We need to go to the sewers,” Richie said. 

“We need to stay above ground,” Bill said.

“I’m with Bill,” Mike said with a nod. “Whatever is happening to Eddie, we can’t risk it happening again while we’re down there.” 

“We can’t risk it happening again _ at all _,” Richie insisted. He turned to Eddie. “Do you think you can walk?”

“_ Richie _!” Bev sounded shocked. “You can’t possibly think it’s a good idea to move him.” 

But when Richie met her eyes, she realized that wasn’t what he thought at all. She realized he was terrified, and out of options. 

“Guys, it doesn’t hurt,” Eddie was saying while Richie and Beverly had some kind of silent eye contact conversation. Neither of them noticed him quietly tearing the bandages off. 

“Maybe we should wait for the doctor,” Ben started to say, but Eddie was too quick. Eddie tossed the gauze aside as well. They all stopped to stare. His chest was unmarked. 

Bill and Mike threw worried looks at one another. Bev shivered, running her hands up and down her arms.

“Well,” Richie said, his voice empty of feeling. “Guess we don’t need to wait for the doctor after all.”

*

They went back to Derry Town House to let Eddie change. 

“I fucking hate this place so much,” Richie said, pouring himself a drink. “What time is it?” 

“Noon,” Ben said gently. 

Richie sighed, put the bottle back on the shelf, and left the glass untouched. “What’s the plan, then? Come on Mike, you’ve got to have some kind of idea, man. Another ritual? Do we need to eat a horse heart raw?”

“I don’t know, Rich. Really—in all of my research, in all the years of staying here and keeping an eye out, I haven’t seen anything like this.”

“That’s the opposite of helpful.” 

“None of us are giving up,” Bill said. “None of us are leaving until we figure this out. Together.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Eddie’s voice came from the top of the stairs. He had changed, looking too small and too thin in an oversized hoodie, and somehow still the calmest of them all. If he had been asked five days ago, Richie would not have been able to think of a worse candidate for something like this to happen to. Eddie felt enough body horror as it was, without also having the fear of literally breaking open lurking over him. But looking at him now, Richie realized he might have underestimated him. It made him proud, and he tucked that feeling away, for later, for a time that didn’t feel like the fucking apocalypse. 

Because that time would come eventually, Richie told himself. 

“Don’t be stupid,” Bill was saying. 

“Yeah, Eddie,” Bev said. “We’re not asking you for permission.” 

Despite the reality that he could literally just die at any moment with no warning, Eddie found himself smiling at them, at his friends, and his family. This circle of people who felt like the whole world, who would be frozen in time for him forever. _ True love _, he thought. Richie was standing at the bar, hunched over, his head in his hands. When he looked up again, Eddie caught his eye.

“Alright,” Richie said quietly, and then after a moment, louder, in his absolute worst cockney accent: “Back to Neibolt we go!”


End file.
